• The Southeast Asian review
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.95-131
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• 2012

This study compares the two biggest Islamic organizations in Indonesia, Nahdlatul Ulama(NU) and Muhammadiyah. As previous studies focus on their theological and ideological aspects, this study tries to analyze not only their religious orientation but also position of religious leaders, organizational structure, leadership system, routine activities and susceptibility to new religious change. The second part of this paper deals with religious and socio-political backgrounds under which the two organizations were established and with differences in the ways of interpreting Islamic teachings. This will provide the basis for understanding the dynamics of their later development. The third part explores religious authority supported by both. For this, perspectives on established religious schools, rational interpretation of the Scriptures, mystical practices and hereditary succession of religious leadership are to be analyzed. In addition, the ways different attitudes towards religious authority have impacted on organizational structure are to be examined. The topic of the fourth part is leadership composition, and blood and teacher-student relationships among chairpersons are to be analyzed. The last part deals with how different orientations of the two have impacted on their activities and especially on the ways of accommodating new religious ideas. For this, the ways 'liberal Islamic thought' has been introduced, accommodated and negotiated in each organization are to be compared with. With these discussions, it is expected that religious orientations, organizational structure, leadership system and organizational flexibility of the two can be understood. This analysis can help to have a glimpse on Islamic development in Indonesia and of socio-cultural and political influences the two have exerted on Indonesian society.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.109-132
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• 2017

This article is about the emergence of Islamic modernism among Cham Muslim communities in Cambodia and Cochinchina during the early 20th century. Based on a combined critical reading of existing scholarship, historicized first-hand anthropological accounts, as well as archival sources from the National Archives of Cambodia and the Vietnam National Archives II, it argues accounts of modernists in these sources were either (1) cast through a French colonial reading of a Buddhist state lens and (2) cast through a Malay lens, based upon the Kaum Muda/Kaum Tua divide. First, it proceeds with a historical explanation of the emergence of Islam and the discourse used to describe Muslim communities in Vietnamese, French, and Cham language sources. Then, it turns the narrative toward an examination of the emergence of the "Kaum Muda" or "New Group" of reformist-minded modernist Muslims in early 20th century Cambodia. Delineating the networks of these intellectuals as they stretched across the border through Cochinchina, also highlights a pre-existing transnational element to the community, one that well predates current discussions of twenty-first-century transnationalism. Through a combination of the study of multiple language sources and historical methods, the article highlights the importance of polylingualism in the study of the history of Muslims in Southeast Asia.